Training Log Archive: Boyzone

Irish Middle Distance Champs - Oughterard, Galway. Absolutely fantastic terrain, very technical with lots of boulders and contour detail, energy sapping boggy terrain to make it pretty physical too. The fact that the orienteering was so nice outshined my shite run. I was surprised to meet Hellsac (4min man) coming into number 1 just as I was punching it and even more surprised to see josh (8 min man - did not know the issue he was having with reading the map obviously)! So we set off as a pack to gobble up the controls, we did well for the first seven, spiking each of them (I had the leading time (just) at this point) but then on the way to eight in true pack mentality we decided to let loose then after thirty seconds or so of galloping a thought came to mind "who's reading the map, I know I ain't" so I slammed on the brakes, stopped and tried to figure it out, then the lads veared down the hill and I became a sheep and down I went too, we wandered around the area south of number 8 about three hundred metres short like headless chickens! After 11mins lost, Hellsac got us back on track, and we were off again, another few good legs with a sprint down the hill to 11 to try and cut loose, the lads too fast, then a couple of silly mistakes at twelve and thirteen but managed to get ahead despite those mistakes just to make another big mistake (on my own) at 16 going down the open/light green just before 16. The lads passed me as I was fecking up to gain back a minute by the finish. Very enjoyable race - I would have been annoyed in the past but the area was great!

Course 1 - Splits